Neuromancer writing style
Yeah, I'm currently reading this.
For those of you who's read it, how would you describe the prose? I'm trying to describe it myself, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a fitting description. It's... too "writerly", it's like a parody of how a writer writes. It's film noir narration mixed with a failed attempt at being cool. It's too cool. So it turns cheesy and parodic.
I think that's actually the most accurate I can describe it, almost every sentence in the book feels like it's taken right out of some film-noir parody.
There's some hardboiled in there too, but that's a given because of the film-noir influence.
Especially sentences like these, are what I'm referring to:
Opening line of book, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
"Under bright ghosts burning through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, holograms of Wizard's Castle, Tank War Europa, the New York skyline... And now he remembered her that way, her face bathed in restless laser light, features reduced to a code: her cheekbones flaring scarlet as Wizard's Castle burned, forehead drenched with azure when Munich fell to the Tank War, mouth touched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon."
Laughable right? I'd like to hear Chuck's comments if anyone were to submit writing like that.
"He looked back as the plastic door swung shut behind him, saw her eyes reflected in a cage of red neon."
Character is looking at shurikens:
"They caught the street's neon and twisted it, and it came to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome."
The whole book is like that. Just horrible.
It has a noir feel because the cyberpunk genre incorporates elements of noir. (See Blade Runner, and Altered Carbon.) Complaining about the noir feel in cyberpunk is like complaining about silly euphemisms for fucking in romance novels, or laughing at the use of horses in a Western. You simply don't like the genre, which is fine, but Neuromancer is a masterpiece within it.
Also, the opening line for Neuromancer is widely regarded as one of the greatest opening lines in fiction, ever. For any genre.
Wasn't this the book that sort of started the cyberpunk genre, was there a genre called cyberpunk before this book, and was it a rule to include the noir feeling?
Also, I don't think I'm complaining about it having a noir feeling, more that it's overdone, and every line supposed to be so fucking cool, not to mention overly-descriptive and uses too many similes and metaphors.
The opening line is fine by itself, I just used it as an example of the types of sentences you find in the book.
I also don't hate the book, but I do have a big problem with parts of the prose. There's some good sentences alright, but they would stand out way more if the book was written, I don't know, more plainly otherwise. More minimalist? Guess we can't have that everywhere.
I haven't read this book but after reading those "bad" examples I just popped it in my e-basket. Sounds pretty badass to me. That opening sentence was great! Just because Chuck doesn't write like that doesn't mean it's shit, dude. Fuck this elitist attitude when it comes to "minimalist" writing. If you love it that god damned much then don't pick up books that clearly aren't going to be minimal in their prose. Nor should you read Noir if you don't like it. Noir is heavy in the description department, some people like that, some people don't. Ugh, I could go on, but I won't.
Fair enough, and if I just helped sell a copy of Neuromancer, that's cool with me. Come back to this thread when you've read it. I read a lot of stuff that's not minimalist, of course, but there's a difference between descriptive prose and overly-descriptive, also a lot of different ways to describe something. I just feel it gets to the cheesy and parodic point with Neuromancer, the way it's done, hard to take the book seriously, but then again, maybe it shouldn't be, maybe it was never meant to be.
Oh, well.
"BITCH," he said to the rose tint over Shiga. Down on Ninsei the holograms were vanishing like ghosts, and most of the neon was already cold and dead. He sipped thick black coffee from a street vendor's foam thimble and watched the sun come up. "You fly away, honey. Towns like this are for people who like the way down."
Still sounds perfect to me. I guess he was going for pulpy, hard-boiled prose in a noir world, and maybe you don't dig that, and that's cool. If you think you kind of like noir but still lean to the minimalist side of the prose fence then maybe you should check out an author that is much-loved around these parts, Craig Clevenger. He's writing is pretty noir, but not pulpy. He's prose is tighter than most. he's also been called a minimalist. His first book, The Contortionist's Handbook is where it's at.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've seen him mentioned here, and I've actually ordered both of his books.
William Gibson is the shit. I love Neuromancer! (Although it's been about 10 or 15 years ago that I read it.) Didn't Gibson actually coin the term "cyberspace" with those books?
Get on over to my website, young'un! www.subvertfromwithinrecords.blogspot.com
So it turns cheesy and parodic.
maybe cheesy, but I don't see how it could be parodic when it was the first one.
Also, the opening line for Neuromancer is widely regarded as one of the greatest opening lines in fiction, ever. For any genre.
Tyler, you are spot on with your observation. Gibson defines the genre. If one doesn't like said genre or the book itself ok. But, anyone who complains about Gibson's style based upon noir and distopian rain slicked streets within the story has missed the boat. What's next? lets bitch about The Difference Engine because it has steam engines in it. Give me a break Gibson is an excellent writer and I hope everyone who reads this thread does themselves a favor and reads some of his work, it is real quality.
"At some point he realized that he had began to play a game with himself, a very ancient one with no name, a kind of final solitare."-William Gibson
It was the first hugely successful cyberpunk novel, but not the first written.
I'll also add another vote for "Less minimalist fiction, please."
This is why we can't have nice things.
even if it was the third or fourth one, i still don't see how it could be a parody of itself.
Anyways, i think I prefer neil stephenson to Gibson anyways.
Lots of good input here, valid points, all.
About the parody thing, maybe I should specify, I didn't mean it was a parody of cyberpunk. It felt more like a parody of noir/hardboiled.
I also think my initial observations were too harsh, I still feel though, that some of the prose is a bit corny/cheesy. But there's also some very good lines, here and there.
nathanial parker, Snow Crash is more of a fun book, isn't it? I actually have it, but haven't read it yet.
I'm going to pick up another Gibson book, Spook Country, which has received a lot of praise for its prose.
I'm going to pick up another Gibson book, Spook Country, which has received a lot of praise for its prose.
Dude, it's genre fiction. You don't go to McDonald's looking for steak tartare, and you don't read genre fiction for air-tight prose n' shit. It's all about the story, with the understanding that any great prose, character development, or deep insight that challenges the reader about the world we live in is a welcome bonus.
It's common knowledge that 99.999% of commercial fiction authors give minimal consideration to the things you are looking for in prose when they write, so it's ridiculous to judge their work on the same curve as literary fiction when it was never their aim to compete with literary fiction in the first place. Grab some Nabokov and be done with it.
What's next? Criticize Tom Clancey for two dimensional, cookie-cutter characters?
I assume Raymond Chandler was his primary influence. I thought Spook Country was a snoozer, but I liked all of his other novels.
҉ lol wut